Thoughts on the ASUG Survey on SAP HANA

This week, I read a survey from the Americas SAP User Group (ASUG) about the adoption of SAP HANA. ASUG is an important institution for SAP and our customers. We consider it to be a powerful voice for our technology users – one we take very seriously and continue to support. There is no reason for SAP to exist, save for our customers and their success, and that’s why its important to shed light on the survey and what it means for our customers.

According to the survey data, we have a high percentage of customers who haven’t yet purchased SAP HANA and cite their lack of use case understanding for the technology. Fair enough. SAP can always do more to ensure customers understand the opportunity SAP HANA gives them to reduce costs and simplify/accelerate their business processes. I get the intent of the question but asking people who don’t own HANA what they think of it, is like asking people who have never driven a car what they think about the speed and handling capability of a Porsche. On the other hand, Unilever who has deployed HANA has this to say, “The best thing that SAP HANA at Unilever enabled was face-to-face discussions with our functions to really investigate new business scenarios, new business processes, and to drive into new territories. Besides the acceleration, the user experience improved significantly. We are asked by multiple users for more and more HANA-empowered solutions. It was probably the first time in my role that I really delighted the end-users and made their life easier.” – Thomas Benthien (sp), Global IT Director at Unilever.

One set of data I found most interesting was that nearly 75% of SAP customers who said they have no plans to implement SAP HANA at this time believe that SAP will support their existing environments in the future or for at least five years or more. To me, this feels like a great thing. Customers don’t feel forced or pressured to do something. That’s the antitheses of what people perceive software companies to be. Furthermore it’s the right thing to do – support our loyal customers and partners who invested in SAP a decade or two ago vs. only focusing on the here and now. That’s why people choose SAP.

For customers who are maintaining their legacy environments – while SAP will continue to support this, the marketplace is less forgiving. big data, IoT, cloud, and mobility have converged to create a business environment that is changing at an incredibly rapid pace. Bottom line – HANA is the bridge between rapidly changing technology, fast-moving market trends, and businesses that must continue to generate revenue in a constantly moving marketplace.

For customers who ARE using HANA, nearly half of all the respondents said they found significant ROI in areas like simplification and cost reduction. This means we are winning the battle against complexity by helping customers run simpler. We just need to work harder to clear the path for the rest of our customers. We are just beginning to explore the impact HANA is having on business transformation goals, increased revenue generation, and time and resource savings. Survey results on this type of business impact could prove to be the tipping point that makes HANA a complete no-brainer.

I learned a lot by reading the survey. I learn more every day by speaking directly with our customers. When I hear them tell me how challenged their businesses are by the weight of legacy, complex enterprise software and hardware systems, it strengthens my belief that HANA is the way forward. Clearly, companies want to run simple. In fact, our CEO, Bill McDermott, has said many times that “Run Simple” is the new era in enterprise computing. It turns out he is right and so are our customers.

I have a key takeaway and an invitation. The takeaway is that our customers need us to step up and help them solve the big problems across their technology landscape and business processes…but do it in a way that’s easy to understand with clear ROI and use cases. We are fully committed to this.

The invitation is for all customers who want to transform their business and capitalize on the opportunities that have been opened up through technology innovation, big data, IoT, cloud, and mobility…deploy HANA. Email us, tweet us, call us…we will help you find the right use case to grow your business faster than your competitors and lower your costs at the same time. If you need an environment to evaluate HANA, we can help you with that too! Join us and we WILL help you succeed!

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Access the below links to find more than 1,000 use cases, customer references/stories, and deployment scenarios showing lower TCO.

Comments

Steve, agree with your assessment and certainly in the Asia Pacific region I see many customers experiencing significant business value from their HANA investment. So for customers in Asia wanting to engage SAP to discover what HANA can do for them feel free to contact me on twitter @pmmarriott

Steve — thanks for writing the post and highlighting the successes and challenges identified in the ASUG member survey on HANA adoption. If anyone wants to have a look at a summary of the key points from the survey, please go to: ASUG Member Survey Reveals Successes, Challenges of SAP HANA Adoption – ASUG News. (ASUG members can download the full survey report via the Discussions page on ASUG.com.) -Tom Wailgum, ASUG

Great blog Steve and completely in line with what most of our customers have been saying here in ANZ. It’s all about the use cases and the ROI. And that’s where we feel we can show the customer the way by bringing innnovative use cases to their attention. We are fortunate in presales to have a global network and we bring use cases to our customer’s attention of what customers are doing in other parts of the world. Another use case is around Fraud Management and the ROI is visible pretty much straight away for our customers.

Same offer as Paul Marriott has put out there, if you want assistance with use cases in Australia/New Zealand, feel free to reach out to me. Peggy Renders, Platform Presales Manager SAP ANZ

I liked this survey a lot because it brings a customer perspective to the table in a fair way. Other user groups in the past have approached it in a more bearish and less fact-centric manner. Here are my key takeaways:

– 25% of surveyed customers on HANA is huge. That is massive market adoption for any database in just 3 years.

– Customers expect partners, and partners expect SAP to provide the use and business cases. Clearly this is something that SAP needs to spend more time on, as if the survey is correct, this is the #1 barrier to adoption.

– Building business cases for data platforms is hard! I do this every day and it is hard! Each customer is different and the factors are different. And anyone who has built a business case for analytics knows how difficult this is on any technology. Connecting improved insight to dollars requires a leap of faith…

– … and those who take that leap of faith are by and large extremely happy. HANA, like any other technology, needs a good implementation partner with great resources and so not every implementation is a success. I have found that a first successful HANA project is absolutely crucial.

– There is no mention of technology maturity problems or Enterprise Readiness. That battle has been won.

– The fact that cloud is barely mentioned is a concern. Partially this is because ASUG members are probably mostly on-premise install-base customers, but still.

So there is still wood to cut, for sure. Aggregated customer feedback at this scale is a very valuable asset.

agree that there is still a lot of work to be done, but the good news is that is what we are all here for. You are raising very important points on the HANA Adoption and the implementation partner role on this.

If the project is delivered well then you have the “Wow effect” at the customer which will lead to more project and the customer wanting to adopt more.

Regarding the Use Cases. You are right that there is not a one size fits all yet not even per industry. But maybe that is exactly what we are finding as the new normal. If you are having different use cases even in the same industry than it means that customers are really starting to innovate and find their very own areas of improvement. There is a limitation with scalability but that will be then again where Partners come into game.

I am very much looking forward to discover new use cases with Partners in our customers and also do business cases.

Totally agree that providing use cases is the way to gain adoption in the LE and SME markets. However, most small to medium-size enterprises do not believe HANA is a fit for them, but it can be provided the right use case. Textile, Rubber and Chemical Company was a recent SAP HANA Innovation Award winner, and they have gained tremendous operational analytics value with Suite on HANA. The HANA platform simplified TRCC’s SAP landscape by providing one source for all data and less IT infrastructure to maintain which supports the idea of “Run Simple”. For anyone interested in learning how an SME such as TRCC uses HANA, checkout their story at bit.ly/U9Wzsh

What I find promising is that “while customers who have yet to take the SAP HANA plunge perceive costs as one of the top factors, the number-one identified business value that SAP HANA has delivered to those customers that have actually deployed is—‘SAP HANA has helped us to optimize costs.’” I just wanted to take this chance to again promote the and commissioned by SAP that gives evidence on the cost saving potentials of SAP HANA.

Having worked with Clients like Unilever for the last 10 years and multiple Retail / CP Clients in the SAP platform solutions area for at least 20 years, I’d just like to add a few comments in a friendly way.For sure if a SAP Business Suite client has the opportunity to re-implement, like SAP Ag with SAP CRM a new template or the future simplified SAP Financials, Inventory Management, Sales & ATP processes over time, no one would argue with the logic of opportunities to enhance throughput, the user end user experience and to lower the overall SAP TCO through application and business process simplification at multiple levels. However in IT, as in life overall to use a well known saying their are typically more than one way to skin a cat, in particular if enhanced user throughput for complex, large scale mixed SAP ECC, BW, PI, PLM, MDM, SAP Portal etc workloads is required in support of a large and diverse global enterprise. A number of Enterprises, just like Unilever run a highly virtualised consolidated and optimised SAP platforms over a range of SAP platform technologies (inc PowerVM, DB2, Oracle, IBM’s SAN VC etc) in addition to SAP HANA on IBM’s eX5 or eX6 technologies for side car CO PA, ML, GL acceleration. It true to say for any Enterprise SAP client when you combine multiple SAP modules with demanding and busy SAP roll out schedules that may combine single and dual track (development and support) deployment landscapes (which can result in up to 11 OS / DB imagines per SAP production system) the overall platform TCO equation becomes significant more complex in particularly if you are already extensively virtualised, compressed and optimised in addition to seeking to achieve specific Data Centre, IT efficiency and sustainable business growth objectives. For sure it’s not for me to judge the merits and different technology choices that different SAP Enterprises select to successfully deploy and meet their specific SAP Business Suite deployment needs. I believe it was indicated, mentioned at SAPPHIRE / ASUG 2014 there are in the region of 40-45,000 SAP Business Suite deployments overall, with in the region of 600-700 productive SAP HANA Clients with Circa 3,700 licensed to-date, understanding these numbers are constantly changing. For SAP BW / Analytics / OLAP workloads to use your analogy I can see and share the obvious benefits of “in memory” columnar database technologies (SAP HANA and/ or for example DB2 BLU to name but just two, on indeed using the SAP BWA to address similar challenges before) to provide accelerated Porsche (or Audi R8, or Lamborghini Gallardo to be brand neutral all excellent cars) like performance. However I can also imagine large customised and configured SAP ECC / OLTP workloads where you really need a large motor coach with very flexible seating arrangements to get anything between 2 at 50 people between A and B on a very regular and cost effective basis, you may or not choose in this scenario to buy 25 Porsches Caymans S’s (or Audi R8’s or Gallado’s), In indeed you may choose to match a choices of vehicles to your portfolio of transport needs, different in the week to the weekend etc. You would certainly look carefully to match the transport platform to your needs, expected annual mileage, available budget, platform depreciation / refresh cycle, passenger load and variation with time (starting out single, then a couple, with children, an extended family, a sports team with cycles and so on) with the boundaries between these different needs and phases of life being blurred and changing through time.I guess if I net this all out whilst one size fits all is in theory the simplest answer, it may not always be the only answer and choice one can make. Hope you don’t mind me gently mentioning this. Kind Regards

I liked this survey a lot because it brings a customer perspective to the table in a fair way. Totally agree that providing use cases is the way to gain adoption in the LE and SME markets. However, most small to medium-size enterprises do not believe HANA is a fit for them, but it can be provided the right use case

asking people who don’t own HANA what they think of it, is like asking people who have never driven a car what they think about the speed and handling capability of a Porsche

But Mr. Lucas, there are facts available about any car makes and models that would allow anyone to compare easily all the characteristics of car A and B and even see how they compare to, say, a spaceship that very few people in the world have ever driven. In fact, any person with Internet connection can easily find out that Porsche has not been on the list of the fastest production cars since the 80s and Bugatti eats them for breakfast, as far as the speed is concerned.

I hope very much that both you and Dr. Plattner will accept my invitation and join our NC/SC ASUG chapter meeting in October. It will be at the BMW facility and is expected to have one of the best attendance rates – as you see, ASUG members are the car enthusiasts too.

I am reading this blog now after having assisted to your Dcode Talk and Bjorn’s one. And my reaction to the ASUG poll was akind of straight in reminding me Guy Kawasaki, presenting his 12 personal teaching from Steve Jobs. I think it will give to all people debating here a clear idea to where Innovative SAP is going, jumping over the legacy curve.

“All of SAP’s future innovations and development will be made on the SAP HANA platform.

The fact is that without SAP HANA, access to innovations will be limited and perhaps even non-existent.”

This doesnt sound like SAP´s actually committed to it´s loyal customer´s investments but more like that SAP heard what it wanted to hear “force us to buy-in and we might”… well that´s what SAP is doing, threatening it´s loyal customer base to embrace HANA because they are told to do so. How much HANA adoption can be achieved from net new customers if that´s your strategy? I´m personally not too positive about it´s outcome.

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